Lilla Hortoványi

Strategy Without Templates

Adaptation in Digital Environments

6.4 Architecture-Mediated Search: Platforms as Structuring Conditions

Experimentation does not take place in an open search space. The fourth mechanism, architecture-mediated search, captures the fact that platforms and digital infrastructures structure the conditions under which experimentation occurs. This mechanism is crucial because it connects the strategic process more directly to the mediated environment described in the earlier chapters. Firms do not simply search under uncertainty. Therefore, search is not neutral exploration but structurally conditioned variation.

Platforms influence experimentation in at least three ways. First, they delimit the range of possible actions. What can be changed, tested, combined, or scaled is partly structured by the architecture itself. Second, they shape feedback by determining what can be seen, measured, and inferred. The granularity, timing, and form of available signals are not neutral. Third, they impose behavioral constraints through ranking rules, participation requirements, access conditions, and governance mechanisms. This is why platform environments can be understood as structuring experimentation rather than merely hosting it (Rahman et al., 2023). They define both the space of possible moves and the criteria by which those moves are evaluated.

The result is constrained exploration. Firms do exercise agency, but not through unconstrained design. They act within environments where architecture partly defines what counts as a feasible variation, what becomes visible as feedback, and what can be retained as a promising direction. Strategic adaptation, therefore, becomes a process of navigating and adjusting within externally structured conditions rather than designing from a neutral starting point. Agency operates within bounds that are endogenous to the environment itself.

Therefore, strategy should not be understood through a voluntarist view of experimentation, in which firms are assumed to freely choose when and how to experiment, treating experimentation as a discretionary and controllable managerial tool applied to a largely passive environment. In such a view, outcomes are attributed primarily to managerial intent and design. By contrast, in digitally mediated environments, experimentation is structurally induced and becomes a necessity. It unfolds within architectures that pre-structure what can be tested, what becomes visible, and what can be retained as viable. Moreover, these architectures evolve. Changes in platform design, governance, metrics, or data access alter the conditions of experimentation over time, thereby reshaping the space in which search occurs. Therefore, firms must adapt not only to market responses, but also to infrastructural shifts that redefine what can be explored and how it can be evaluated. Search conditions are thus dynamic, introducing second-order uncertainty into strategic action.

Tartalomjegyzék

Kiadó: Akadémiai Kiadó

Online megjelenés éve: 2026

ISBN: 978 963 664 204 4

Gazdaság

What happens when understanding comes only after action has already begun?

Traditional strategy rests on the assumption that organizations can understand their environment before deciding how to act. Yet the conditions that once allowed organizations to rely on benchmarking, best practices, and proven strategic templates can no longer be taken for granted. Today, organizations increasingly face situations for which no clear roadmap exists. Established assumptions become less reliable, familiar reference points lose their clarity, and strategic decisions must be made before their consequences can be fully understood.

Strategy Without Templates explores how organizations learn, adapt, and navigate environments in which uncertainty is pervasive and established templates are absent or no longer sufficient. Instead of treating strategy as a process of prediction and planning, the book explores how strategic paths take shape through action, experimentation, adjustment, and learning.

A central insight in the book is that temporary solutions are often necessary. What begins as a practical response to an immediate challenge may gradually shape future possibilities in unexpected ways. Some solutions create new opportunities and sources of advantage. Others become constraints that are difficult to overcome.

Hivatkozás: https://mersz.hu/hortovanyi-strategy-without-templates//

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